Sustainable Experts Poised to Reshape Autodesk University's Future

Ever wonder what the carbon footprint of a major tradeshow like Autodesk University (AU 2009) might be? This week, when I met Autodesk's sustainable design program manager Dawn Danby, I posed that question to her. I was expecting an evasive answer. To my surprise, she gave me a number: 8,000 metric tons.

In the previous years, at company-hosted press conferences and user events, Autodesk president and CEO Carl Bass had called attention to the rise of green house gas emission, putting the burden squarely on the building profession. ("The building sector accounts for almost half of all greenhouse gas emissions in the U.S. annually," according to a U.S. Green Building Council announcement). Recent additions of green experts into Autodesk's corporate mix indicate the company is willing to practice what it preaches (not always the case with industry-leading corporations). The company's recruitment efforts netted Lynelle Cameron, director of sustainability (hired in 2007); Emma Stewart, senior program lead for Autodesk's sustainability initiative (hired in November 2008); and Dawn Danby, sustainable design program manager(hired in June 2008).

One of the results of the company's sustainable focus is a new corporate carbon accounting methodology, called C-FACT. "The approach calls for companies to reduce GHG emissions in line with global scientific and policy climate stabilization targets, and in proportion to companies’ relative contribution to the economy, measured by gross domestic product (GDP)," Autodesk explains. In other word, it calls for each company to do its own part in green house gas reduction according to its GDP contribution. This is a method Autodesk is developing; it hopes its rivals and partners alike will adopt it.

"For FY10 (February 2009-January 2010), the methodology points to the need for Autodesk to reduce its absolute emissions by 4.52% compared to our FY09 (February 2008-January 2009) baseline. This translates to 3,756 metric tons of GHG (green house gas)," the company outlines.

Some of the more tangible changes can be seen in the use of recycled nylon bags at AU, the use of compostable utensils during meal times, and the show catalogs printed on recycled post-consumer waste paper.

Perhaps more significantly, Autodesk launched AU Virtual this year, allowing those who cannot be onsite to attend the conference from the comfort of their own homes and offices, via a browser. The virtual event costs nothing (it costs $99 if you purchase AU Virtual Premiere, which gives you access to a number of live streaming sessions). The appeal of AU Virtual is evident in the stats. Estimated AU attendees onsite: 6,000; registered AU Virtual attendees: 16,000.

For a design software company like Autodesk, green initiatives are good not just for its corporate soul but also for its balance sheet. The company's acquisition of Green Building Studio and Ecotect turned it into a leader in the building energy analysis software market. With these two packages under its wings, Autodesk began working towards integrating many of the analysis features -- carbon count, energy use estimate, solar study, sun angle study, and LEED credit calculation, to name but a few -- into its leading architectural software Revit. (For resources on learning to use Ecotect, visit the software tutorial list here.)

"Last year, a number of our team members looked at six of Autodesk facilities around the world, including the ones in Toronto, California, UK, and Shanghai," said Danby. "We used some of our own technologies to do energy modeling."

Danby's team tested out the workflow of using a combination of Autodesk ImageModeler (to obtain the rough geometry of the facilities from photographs) and Green Building Studio (to conduct Web-based carbon calculation) to better understand the facilities.

"We did that to try to improve the facilities, but also to learn from working on our own buildings using our own technologies," said Danby.

One of the things Autodesk customers can personally do might be to choose to receive their software purchases and updates as downloads instead of shrink-wrapped packages. By Autodesk's estimate (using ISO 14044-compliant methods), the carbon footprint of a single copy of AutoCAD delivered totals up to 2.331 metric tons. By comparison, a download copy of AutoCAD comes up to only 0.461 metric ton. Some of the biggest contributor for the carbon-count increase in package software delivery comes from transportation, product assembly, and raw material extraction. (For a detailed breakdown, see this chart from Autodesk.)

"We can all individually do certain things within our control -- choosing whether to take a plastic bottle or not, choosing one kind of light instead of another. But the impact of the decisions that made during the design stage by engineers and architects are unbelievably powerful," Danby pointed out. "There's only so much a consumer can do afterwards. I would encourage designers to learn to wield their power more responsibly."

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LAS VEGAS, NV (Autodesk University), Nov 28, 2011 -- The mad rush to put professional tools in the hands of non-professionals was given a face and a voice Monday afternoon when Autodesk CEO Carl Bass excitedly told of an inventor who flew his "aerocopter" to a height of 3,000 ft.